“It is entirely legitimate for the
American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of
violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of
folks in a deli in Paris,” he said.

Kurdish forces backed by U.S. air
strikes seized the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar from Islamic State on
Friday, a Reuters witness said, in one of the most significant
counter-attacks since the militants swept through the north last year.

"ISIL defeated and on the run," the Kurdistan regional
security council said in a tweet, using an acronym for Islamic State. It
said Kurdish peshmerga forces, which led the operation, had secured
Sinjar's wheat silo, cement factory, hospital and several other public
buildings.

Sinjar is home to
Iraq's Yazidi minority who suffered at the hands of Islamic State when
it overran the area in August 2014, systematically slaughtering,
enslaving and raping thousands.

A former American ambassador to Canada says he is embarrassed by how
the U.S. government handled the Keystone XL pipeline review.

David Wilkins, who was ambassador during the presidency of George W.
Bush, says there was no need to take seven years to announce a decision.

U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the US$8-billion cross-border
pipeline a week ago on the grounds it would neither help the U.S.
economy nor its efforts to combat carbon emissions. ...“Frankly, I was embarrassed by the way my government handled the whole
thing. A seven-year delay. Absolutely unnecessary. That simply is not
how you treat a friend, period,” said Wilkins.
“This is a classic example of politics trumping good policy. President Obama chose politics, in my opinion.”

Let’s hope Canada’s newly minted Trudeau cabinet, now being
indoctrinated with “green orientation and sensitivity” under the aegis
of Stephane Dion, isn’t taking those sensitivity lessons from the
Liberal’s in-house broadcaster. In a sensational bit of reportorial
distortion and ignorance, CBC News on Thursday reported that Canada and
other G20 nations are “spending US$452-billion a year subsidizing their
fossil fuel industries.”The number comes from Oil Change International, one of scores of
front organizations funded by an unholy cabal of activist U.S.
foundations — Tides, Hewlitt, Oak, Rockefeller — whose billion-dollar
cash pools are being mobilized to rid the world of fossil fuels and
reduce the world’s population of messy people. The $452-billion was
described as “shocking” by Oil Change activist Alex Doukas, especially
since the objective of the coming Paris climate summit is to have most
of the world’s oil and gas reserves “stay in the ground.”

Upon the orchestrated release of the Oil Change report, the CBC
immediately latched on to the false claim that Canada provides direct
subsidies of C$3.6-billion to the oil and gas industry and another
$3-billion indirectly through Export Development Canada. The Toronto
Star (in a special report in a series subsidized by the same Tides
Foundation that also funds Oil Change) also played the subsidy story
more or less straight.

The first bit of sensitivity training for the new Trudeau cabinet
should aim to alert ministers to the fact that they are being bamboozled
by professional statistical tricksters, not just over the science of
climate change. The claim that Canada subsidizes fossil fuels with more
than $6-billion in government money is demonstrably false.

The $3-billion from Export Development Canada is not a subsidy. The
federal Crown corporation appears to have provided fossil fuel finance
to Canadian companies exploring outside Canada. A loan is not a subsidy,
and since EDC generally gets its money back, with interest, the only
real subsidy might be a slightly lower interest rate on the loan or the
marginal guarantee fee. On $3-billion, the level of subsidy might be a
few hundred thousand dollars.